“Well, I don’t think she’s been in here,” Grady said.
“I know everyone in Ocean Beach and I’ve never seen anyone who looks like her,” Charlie added. “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Anyone else here I can show her picture to?” the man asked.
“No,” Grady said quickly. “Slow day.”
“All right, then. Thanks for your time.”
She heard the jingle of the door, but didn’t move. Should she go out the back door to the alley? And then what would she do?
Slowly, she slid off the stool on legs that threatened to give out on her and walked into the shop. The two of them stood there like statues, staring at her, Charlie with an LP in his hands, Grady behind the counter.
“You’re white as a ghost,” Grady said, and Charlie held up his free hand.
“Just tell me you didn’t do it,” he said.
She swallowed, her throat dry as a piece of toast. “I didn’t do it.” What else could she say?
“That’s good enough for me,” Charlie said.
“How long till it occurs to him to check the music department at State?” Grady asked, and her heart nearly stopped beating.
“I have to leave,” she said. “I have to leave Ocean Beach.”
“Go to Celia,” Charlie said. “But tell Ingrid you’re going someplace else.”
She nodded.
Grady opened the cash drawer, counted out five twenties and handed them to her. “We’ll miss you,” he said, then added, “We love you, Jade. Take care.”
* * *
She cleaned out her cottage quickly. She had little to pack and less that she cared about, but she thought she’d better take everything. Her fingerprints were all over the place! She hoped that private investigator never spoke to anyone who would lead him to Ingrid and this cottage. If he was only looking at music shops she’d be safe, but if he took that photograph to the market, someone there was sure to recognize her. And as Grady said, the music department at State … oh, God. How could this be happening?
It took her four trips to carry everything she owned out to her car. She had the one suitcase she’d arrived with. Her textbooks, which she imagined she’d never need again but didn’t want to leave behind in her room. Her laptop computer. The violin and music and music stand. That was it. With every trip to her car, she scoured the neighborhood for Arthur Jones, wishing she’d gotten a look at him. She didn’t know who to fear.
Once the car was full, she found Ingrid hoeing in her small garden behind the shed.
“Ingrid,” she said. “I’m sorry to do this so quickly, but I have to go home.”
“Home?” Ingrid stopped her work and looked at her in absolute shock. “You mean, to your family in Maryland?” Jade hadn’t so much as mentioned that nonexistent family in years.
Jade nodded. “My father somehow found out I’m going to State and he got a message to me that my mother’s really sick.”
Ingrid didn’t say a word. She stared at her, and Jade had to fill the silence.
“And honestly,” she said, “I’ve been missing them. I just have to go. So my rent’s paid up till the end of the month … is that okay? Do I need to give you more? I could—”
“No, Jade.” Ingrid held the hoe upright at her side. “That’s fine. I’m sorry about your mother.” She laid down the hoe and walked over to her, putting her hands on Jade’s shoulders. “You’ve been the best tenant I could ask for, but I’ve always felt you should go home,” she said. “Be with your family. What about school, though?”
“I’ll have to transfer. It’s okay. Family’s more important.” She choked up a little at that. She wished she could go home.
“Are you driving all the way to Maryland?” Ingrid lowered her arms, a worried look on her face. “That will take you days.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going right away. I don’t want to leave my car here.” Was she making any sense or digging herself in deeper? “Thanks so much for everything,” she said.
“Let me get you some food to take with you.” Ingrid took a step toward the house, but Jade grabbed her arm.
“That’s all right, thanks,” she said, afraid that with every second that passed, Arthur Jones was getting closer to her. “I’ll be fine.”
* * *
She had one more stop to make before leaving Ocean Beach: the bank. She still had nearly two thousand dollars in her account. She took the money in cash, stuffing it into her purse, and hoped that she hadn’t set off some kind of alarm in the teller’s head. She was sure she looked like the frightened, guilty woman she was.
* * *
She made it all the way to a rest stop near a town called Redding in northern California before she absolutely had to sleep. Even so, she only managed to doze for about an hour, cramped in the backseat of her car, before fear woke her up. Maybe she should have called Celia before heading to Portland, but she was afraid of what Celia might say. What if she told her not to come? Everything was going wrong for her all of a sudden, and if things went wrong with Celia, too, she couldn’t take it. She didn’t know how she’d explain showing up at her apartment out of the blue, though. Suddenly she felt like she didn’t know Celia well at all. Charlie’d said to go to her, though, and he knew her best.
* * *
She was numb from worry and the road by the time she reached Celia’s apartment the next afternoon. Celia wasn’t there, and Jade sat on the landing outside her door. She had to pee and she was starving as she went over and over in her mind what she planned to say to her. She had it worked out, a long and elaborate string of lies. But when Celia walked up the steps, her face registering surprise at seeing her there, Jade burst into tears.
And then she told Celia everything. Everything. Even the things Daddy had no idea about.
Even the things he couldn’t possibly guess.
PART THREE
40.
Riley
Once I pulled myself together after leaving the message for Suzanne, I drove the rest of the way home with a thrill of excitement running through my body. Lisa was alive! Unless she’d met with some terrible illness or accident—but how likely was that? She was only forty years old. I would find her, and nothing would stop me. I knew, though, that I’d have to be cautious. That meant not telling Danny what I knew, for starters. I’d look for Lisa in a way that put her in no danger, remembering what Tom had said: If Lisa wanted to see you, she could have found you. She had to be afraid of being found. Did she know Daddy was dead? Did she know about our mother, for that matter? Would she care if she did?
* * *
When I walked in the house, Christine grabbed my hand. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. “We hit the mother lode in the attic!” She dragged me into the dining room where she had completely covered the table with knickknacks and stacks of old books and other odds and ends I’d never seen before. I yanked my hand away from her, not at all in the mood to deal with details of the estate sale.
Jeannie walked into the room, her arms overflowing with old sewing patterns.
“Look at these!” she said. “Deb must have saved these from when we were teens just learning to sew. Check out the styles on the packages!”
I looked around my mother’s warm, cozy dining room, now turned into a junk store. I saw the gleam in Christine’s eyes and the dress patterns spilling out of Jeannie’s arms onto the floor. The two of them were now more familiar with the house of my childhood than I was, treating it like their own. I wanted them gone.
“I can’t take this anymore!” I shouted, my voice so loud even I was surprised.
Jeannie stopped walking toward the table, a few more of the patterns falling from her arms. Christine held a small ceramic horse frozen in midair.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What can’t you take?”
“This!” I waved my arm through the air above the table and the hundreds of items from the attic. “The mess in my house! People in my house!
I really—”
“Honey”—Jeannie dropped the patterns onto one of the dining room chairs, where they spilled like a fountain onto the rug—“you just need to let Christine and me handle everything. I’ve told you. There’s absolutely nothing you have to do.”
“I need some peace and quiet,” I said, trying to lower my voice. Trying to keep myself calm. “I know you two are doing a ton of work and I appreciate it, but I need some time to myself.”
They looked at one another. “We could go get a cup of coffee and come back in an hour,” Jeannie suggested to her daughter.
“No.” I looked from one of them to the other. They wore puzzled expressions as if I were speaking a foreign language. “You don’t understand,” I said. “I need days to myself. Maybe weeks.”
“But the sale is in eight days, Riley,” Christine said, “and we’re making fabulous progress, but we have a lot more to—”
“You’ll need to move the sale,” I said.
“What do you mean, ‘move it’?” Christine said. “We can’t cart all this stuff someplace—”
“I mean, postpone it,” I said.
“Oh, no.” Christine finally caught on. “The date is already set and we’re—”
“I don’t care!” I gripped the back of one of the dining room chairs. “I hate this! I hate people in my house, taking it apart bit by bit until I don’t recognize it anymore!” My voice rose to a hysterical pitch and it felt good. “I just lost my father, and now I’m losing the house I grew up in!”
“You should have thought of that before you hired me.” Christine put her hands on her hips. “Everything was ‘rush rush rush’ and now suddenly the brakes are on?”
“Christine.” Jeannie moved to her daughter’s side, a hand on her arm as she tried to calm her down, but that did nothing to temper the anger in Christine’s eyes.
“Yes,” I said, more quietly now. “The brakes are on. I’m not ready to let go of everything. You need to wait until I am.”
Complete silence fell over the dining room. Finally, Jeannie spoke. “All right,” she said, “I’m sorry if we’ve been in your way, Riley. I wanted to make things easier for you, not harder. Let Christine and me organize this mess we made today, and then we’ll postpone the sale and we won’t come back until you’re ready. How’s that?”
“That would be excellent,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Mother!” Christine shot a look of daggers at Jeannie.
“Of course that means the house won’t go on the market until late in the season,” Jeannie said. “We can’t get the repairs and painting and everything done until after the estate sale, but maybe we can—”
“It’ll be fine,” I said calmly, heading for the living room. Suddenly, though, I turned back to face them. “Oh, but the RV park?” I said to Jeannie.
“What about it?” she asked.
“You can put that on the market right away.”
41.
In my bedroom, I closed and locked my door, then sat in the armchair by the front window waiting for them to leave. I could hear them downstairs; the dining room was right below my room. Their voices were muffled, but I imagined they wondered what had gotten into me. I didn’t give a damn. It had been such a relief to tell them to go. I’d still be uncomfortable, living in a house that had been turned upside down, little price tags on every lamp and chair and dish, but I could deal with that, and my own bedroom was an untouched haven.
A half hour passed before I heard the front door close. From the window, I watched Jeannie and Christine walk down the porch steps and across the lawn to their cars in the driveway. I smiled, watching them go. Once they’d driven away, I sat down at my desk and turned on my laptop.
How to begin?
I Googled “Ann Johnson” and immediately knew the name was going to be of absolutely no help. I tried searching for images of women with that name. Pages upon pages of Ann Johnsons showed up on my computer, all looking at me with such haunting expressions that I couldn’t stand it and I closed down Google altogether.
I sat with my hands in my lap, staring at the screen. With his tech skills, would Danny know of some way of finding her I’d never think of? I shook my head to rid it of the idea. It didn’t matter. Even if he did, I couldn’t involve him. Maybe I could hire a private investigator, but would a PI have a legal obligation to tell the police if he or she managed to track Lisa down?
And then I remembered that someone had hired a PI: Steven Davis’s wife, Sondra. And she, I knew, would be easy to find.
It took me only a few seconds to locate her blog again. “Never Forgotten: A Meeting Place for Families of Murder Victims.” My gaze fell to the bottom of the page, where I clicked on the word contact, and a form appeared below Sondra Lynn Davis’s e-mail address. I chewed my lip for a couple of minutes, thinking through what I was about to do. Then I began typing.
Sondra, my name is Riley MacPherson. I am Lisa MacPherson’s younger sister. I was only two at the time of your husband’s death, and I’d never been told the truth about my sister’s role in it. I stumbled across your blog. I wonder if you could tell me if the private investigator made any progress in finding my sister or if he came to the conclusion that Lisa did actually kill herself, which is what my family has always believed.
I’m sorry for your terrible loss, and I’m sure you’re helping a lot of people through your blog.
I read it over several times, adding the sentence about believing that Lisa had killed herself only on the third reading, so that I gave nothing away. I added my phone number and signature, and then hit send.
* * *
I went for a run with my phone in my hand in case Sondra saw my message right away and called me back, but it wasn’t until I’d gotten home, taken a shower, and settled down on the floor in front of the living room cabinets that the phone finally rang. The number on the caller ID was unfamiliar and I held my breath after I said hello.
“Is this Riley MacPherson?”
I knew who it was without her telling me. “Sondra?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her voice was youthful, although I figured she was at least sixty. “I was so shocked to get your message,” she said.
“I’m sure it seemed strange, out of the blue.” I turned to lean my back against the cabinets. “My father died recently and I found articles about … everything that happened. And then I found your blog and realized that you thought Lisa might still be alive, and I just wanted to see if you ever learned anything from your private investigator.”
She was quiet a moment. “You didn’t know she killed Steven?” she asked finally.
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t even two at the time, and all my parents told me was that she was depressed.”
Sondra didn’t speak and for a moment I thought we’d been cut off.
“Sondra?”
“Your sister’s out there somewhere, you know,” she said. “She was never punished for what she did. It’s disgusting. My husband was so gifted, and he would have done anything for her and his other students. I think Lisa’s rise in the music world was too fast for her own good. She was spoiled and selfish, and—”
“Why do you think she’s … out there?”
“The PI we hired found evidence.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“A couple of people recognized her from a photograph. This was in San Diego.”
“San Diego! Why was he looking there?”
“I got a tip that she was in California. Someone—anonymously—sent me a note saying she traveled to San Diego by train.”
I could guess who that someone was. I was so glad I’d called Suzanne to stop the gift deed.
“Of course I received loads of other tips, sending the investigator on a hundred wild-goose chases,” Sondra said. “But this was the only one that got a nibble.”
“Did you tell the police?” I asked.
“Of course. They did nothing,” she said. “They believed she was dead and that I was
obsessed. Which I was, but with good reason. If the PI had found nothing, I would have let it go. Eventually.”
“So … you said some people recognized her picture?” I prompted.
“Yes. She’d changed her hair, of course, but they were certain it was the same girl. They said she worked in a shop in Ocean Beach, which I guess is part of San Diego. The PI talked to the shop owner. He denied knowing her, but the PI thought he was lying. I don’t think the police even followed up on it.” Sondra sounded bitter. I supposed I would feel the same way. “I’m absolutely certain Lisa was living there back then,” Sondra said. “The PI was sure of it, but he just couldn’t find her.”
“So, did he keep looking?”
“Of course, but without any luck,” Sondra said. “And my money was drying up, and without being able to get the authorities interested … it was immensely frustrating.”
“I can imagine,” I said, trying to sound empathetic. “Can you tell me the PI’s name?”
“Well, I could, but he died about ten years ago so there’s not much point.” She hesitated. “Are you going to look for her?”
“Oh … well, honestly, I tend to think the police were probably right about her killing herself.”
I heard her sigh. “You know what my most fervent wish is?” she asked.
“What?”
“I’m sixty-three years old,” she said. “I only pray that I live long enough to see your sister found and brought to justice. That’s my hope and I won’t ever give up on it.”
* * *
When I got off the phone, I sat in a rocker on the back porch, opened my laptop, and looked for any Ann Johnsons who lived in San Diego. I searched for my sister’s features in each photograph that popped up, but I was beginning to think Lisa was wisely living a reclusive life. She probably turned away every time someone pulled out a camera.
It was growing dark, the crickets singing in the yard. I closed my computer and went into the kitchen to scavenge for something to eat. My mother’s Franciscan Ware was piled on the counter, a small price sticker attached to the bottom of each plate and bowl and cup and saucer, and I stood there removing those stickers with a sense of relief. Those dishes belonged to my childhood. I planned to keep every one of them forever.